North Koreans Claim American Captive Chose Their Country For “Shelter”

North Koreans are claiming they are holding an American who they say came to the country this month in order to seek asylum. The authorities in North Korea claim that the man was taken into custody April 10 after tearing up his tourist visa and saying he wants asylum and shelter from the U.S. The claim is rather quite laughable given North Korea’s gross record of human rights violations and it is not clear the true identity of the American man (assuming he is real) and what his intentions of going to North Korea were, although most Americans would find it hard to believe he would choose to go to North Korea to protect himself from America.

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North Korea is holding an American man who it claims arrived in the country this month to seek asylum, the nation’s state news agency reported Friday.

State news agency KCNA said North Korea is holding a man by the name of “Miller Matthew Todd,” who it says was taken into custody on April 10.

The man, according to KCNA, entered the country on a tourist visa. He tore his tourist visa and shouted that “he would seek asylum” and “came to the DPRK (North Korea) after choosing it as a shelter,” KCNA said.

The report came on the day that U.S. President Barack Obama visited South Korea — a trip that North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned as being “aimed to escalate confrontation and bring dark clouds of a nuclear arms race.”